A safe start for all: the Tasmanian Aboriginal Safe from the Start Project final report

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Safe from the Start Project was funded by the Tasmanian Early Years Foundation and builds on the work of the original Safe from the Start project, which was funded through the Commonwealth Office for Women - Domestic and Family Violence and Sexual Assault Initiative 2007/8. Safe from the Start is a Salvation Army Tasmania initiative born out of recommendations from the Salvation Army Tasmania research study 'States of mind' (Bell, 2006), which considered the specific needs of children, aged up to six, affected by family violence. The main aims of the original Safe from the Start project were to: identify key elements of best practice for working with children, aged up to six, affected by family violence; identify effective assessment tools; identify and form a register of intervention activities and therapeutic play which can be used by children’s workers and parents; and train children’s service workers to work with the developed resources. This report charts the history of the Safe from the Start project, the need for a Tasmanian Aboriginal Safe from the Start project, and the context in which it was initiated. This includes the history of Tasmanian Aboriginal people since colonisation and explanation of why domestic and family violence occurs in particularly high rates in communities that have been traumatised. Discussion of the impact of domestic and family violence on children, and the rationale for using activity-based play to help ameliorate the harm experienced are followed by explanation of the methodology to develop toys and storybooks of relevance to Tasmanian Aboriginal children for the 2013 amended version of the Safe from the Start kit.